Page 58 of The Hanging Dolls
For a moment, Zoe thought that everything was going to be fine and she would be pulled into the safety of the station. The next second, someone lunged.
A flash of metal slicing through the air. Zoe’s eyes widened in horror as the knife cut across Scott’s face.
THIRTY-TWO
Scott cried out, sinking to the ground, his hands and face covered in blood. It was everywhere. Zoe’s screech rose above the noise of the crowd. And then chaos erupted. Someone screamed that there was a knife. Another one thought it was a gun.
People pushed and shoved, some trying to get away, others closing in. It was a stampede. The officers at the entrance charged in, batons raised, trying to force the crowd back. Zoe dropped to her knees beside Scott, his hand pressed to his bleeding face. “Scott, the ambulance is on its way.” She was already on her phone. “You hang in there, okay?”
Zoe inhaled the scent of antiseptic and bleach. Unlike most people, she loved hospitals. She never saw it as a place of sickness and death; she saw it as a place where lives were saved. She had witnessed too many deaths that could have been avoided. Sitting on one of the steel chairs outside the ward, she stared at the blue curtain, behind which Scott was being treated.
A: You okay, Storm?
Z: Yeah, just waiting for the doctor to give me an update on Scott.
The blue curtain ripped open and one of the nurses popped her head out. “You can come in now, Agent Storm.”
Scott lay on the bed. A deep gash ran from his cheekbone down toward his jaw, the stitches neat but angry-looking. The skin around it red and swollen. The collar of his shirt was stained with dried blood.
“Wow. I’m going to call you Scott Scarface,” Zoe teased. Scott grimaced and crossed his arms. “Thanks. For saving my ass there. I would buy you a drink but…” She laughed while he glared at her. “Sorry. I make jokes when I’m uncomfortable.”
“Clearly.”
“That was wild. What happened at the station.” She perched on a stool next to him. “I’m guessing that doesn’t really happen here?”
“Never. We weren’t ready. Terri told me she got an invite on Facebook to join some event happening at the police station but she didn’t think much of it until people started showing up with pitchforks.”
“A Facebook event?” Zoe had an idea. “I suppose it’s a small community…”
“What are you thinking?”
“Sometimes killers who are cuckoo, like this one, leave traces on social media. Like odd posts or pictures.”
His lips puckered in thought. “You think this killer might be posting weird poems or some shit?”
“It’s possible.”
“I’ll ask Terri to look into it.”
The curtains ripped open again and a lanky man with a long neck and clumps of white hair and wrinkled skin approached thebed, holding a clipboard. “Detective Cohen? I’m Dr. Vic Parsons. I saw the news. Welcome.”
“Can I leave?” he grumbled.
Dr. Parsons coughed. A smoker’s cough, Zoe noted. His eyes glazed over Scott’s stitches. “You can after you get your tetanus shot. As per your records, you haven’t had one in over twenty years. Do you have any other symptoms?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t like hospitals very much, do you?” the doctor said with a snicker.
“Nope.”
“I like hospitals,” Zoe said, and shook his hand. “Thank you for what you do. I’m Zoe Storm from the FBI.”
Dr. Parsons beamed at her. “It’s refreshing to meet someone who likes my place of work. My grandkids think I work at a cemetery.” He turned to Scott. “Your stitches will begin to dissolve in the next few days and be fully dissolved in weeks or months, worst-case scenario. The nurse told me that the cut wasn’t deep enough for us to worry about any bone damage so I’ll spare you X-rays and CT scans. But if you experience any unusual symptoms at all, you come right back, understood?”
“I will.” Scott started to get up and winced.
“You’ll be in pain. Just take extra strength Tylenol.” He looked at Zoe and winked. “Take care of this one.”
